Japanese Internment vs. Ignoring the AIDs Crisis

[Santander]

Japanese internment was ineffective and a mistake, but it was not immoral given the situation.

Virtually everything Ronald Wilson Reagan did was immoral, which, in a way, is something I admire about him.

Japanese internment, even if you believe it to be immoral, was a temporary suspension of civil liberties for a small group of people. It was an unfortunate, misguided policy, but it cannot compare with the kind of death and suffering caused by the HIV/AIDS policies of politicians like Reagan in the 1980s, the legacy of which we're still living with as a society.

[Santander]

Japanese internment was ineffective and a mistake, but it was not immoral given the situation.

Virtually everything Ronald Wilson Reagan did was immoral, which, in a way, is something I admire about him.

I think the Japanese who spent years in a prison camp just for being Japanese would consider it much more than a "mistake." Even J. Edgar Hoover, that noted paragon of racial tolerance, urged Roosevelt not to do it.

They weren't Japanese, they were Americans. That is why it was a mistake. However, at the time, we had a different idea of what it meant to be American, and such views were not limited towards Americans of Japanese ethnicity.

[Santander]

A mistake is when you forget to take the coffee off the boiler. Jailing thousands of citizens because of their ethnicity is not a mistake.

They were relocated to areas where they could not be compromised by Japan, and because like I said, at the time, people (and the law) had a different idea of what it meant to be American, and the presence of ethnic Japanese in major cities on the West Coast would've been problematic to public order. The Japanese in Hawaii were largely untouched by this policy, so it was not purely a racist policy like you suggest. It was misguided, but there were some pragmatic considerations.

Difficult times call for difficult decisions, and not all of them are correct in retrospect. I don't want to malign our leaders of the time with the kind of sanctimonious language you choose to use.

[Santander]

I don't see how Japanese internment wasn't immoral; it literally criminalized existence - the existence of being of an American with Japanese descent. That's a fundamental, immora misapplication of government power.

First of all, nobody was charged with crimes for simply being ethnic Japanese, so cool the hyperbole.

Very few ethnic Japanese living in Hawaii, which are the largest Japanese population in the US, were not sent to internment camps. Japanese internment was a temporary suspension of civil liberties for people who were considered to be a potential threat (whether or not they were culpable for that threat, because at the time, anti-Japanese sentiment was understandably high) to national security and public order, partly due to their potential to be compromised by an enemy nation, which was Japan. Some ethnic Japanese Americans were affected by this policy, and some were not, depending on where they lived.

The policy was regrettable and worthy of the apology and financial reparations that were given to them, but it is inaccurate to say it was purely racially-motivated, and I don't see what good it does to assume that it was done with immoral intentions, especially in the context of the original post.

[Santander]

Morality only applies to intentions. Outcomes cannot be immoral. You can describe the outcomes as whatever you'd like - unjust, deplorable, unfortunate - and I would agree with you, but there is no such thing as an immoral outcome.

There may have been morally questionable intentions when crafting the policy, but I refuse to cast moral judgement on FDR and other leaders of the time for the complicated decisions they made during the most difficult times in US history.